Lord Collidon Is In His Library

Lord Collidon hadn’t come out of the library in two full days. The household of Collidon Manor was perturbed by the second day, but none of them wanted to be the first to enter unwarranted — the old man had flown into a rage for less. On the third day, though, it was decided that any punishment for disregarding Lord Collidon’s orders that he not be disturbed were worth the risk of him being, well … dead.

Mary Wellings, one of the chamber maids, drew the short straw.

In truth, she hadn’t minded. She was an avid reader, and despite numerous attempts, of varying subtlety, to gain access by offering to attend to the room’s fireplace, she had yet to enter the library. Lord Collidon had often yelled at her about the flammability of the books. He was fiercely protective of everything he owned, but particularly of his collection of histories and literature. Despite rumours of its immense value, it had never been seen by anyone besides himself.

Mary knocked three separate times, and called out politely twice, before she admitted to herself that there wasn’t going to be an answer. She glanced behind her. Lady Collidon, the butler and two other servants all collectively pretended that they weren’t watching from across the hallway; the butler even whistled innocently. Only Lucy, another chamber-maid, with whom Mary shared a room, gave her a nervous thumbs up. The door still loomed before her.

She called once more, for good measure, just in case Lord Collidon had been asleep, or some other reasonable explanation. For two and half days. Without eating. A fool's hope, perhaps, but Mary prided herself on her optimism. Nevertheless, the only answer was a pulsating silence, like air being forced around a stalwartly static particle of dust, seeping from beneath the door.

She steeled her courage, and pushed it open.

The library was disturbingly undisturbed. The curtains were flung open, and the light of the midday sun blinded Mary for a moment — the floorboard and the shiny leather spines of the books were all ringed with reflected light at the edges. But once her eyes grew accustomed, she saw the truth very clearly: Lord Collidon was not there. Nor was there any sign of him. No jacket left draped over a chair, no book open on a table, no window left open, nothing. Silence and stillness had descended upon the room like a veil. He was simply missing. Not just in person, but in something more, something intangible and difficult to ignore. Mary had seen him from the threshold of this room many times, reading from massive tomes, or drinking port by the unlit fireplace, and yet now, despite how much the room’s soul, as it were, revolved around him, it was as though he had never been there at all. As though the library had just swallowed him up without him touching the sides.

She couldn’t explain the feeling, or rather the lack of one. It was, in the best terms she could manage, an absence, bone-deep and bleeding. Every small connection the room had made to him just wasn’t connected any more. She hadn’t liked him — she’d barely even tolerated him — but something about this, something about the lack of any of him, made her deeply sad. It also, once she had had time to process it, made her very, very concerned. She quickly scoured the place, marching up and down all of the shelves, squeezing her way between them as they cramped together in the oldest part of the library. She called his name, and the sound was swallowed by the mass of paper. Lord Collidon didn’t answer. He wasn’t in his library.

So where was he?

Mary exited at something of a lick, and relayed what she had found out, or rather, what she had not, to Lady Collidon and the butler. Their subsequent questions were rapid and overlapping:

He’s gone?

What do you mean, not there?

How can he have left? Where could he have gone?

The fact of the matter was, no one knew where he could have got to with a two and a half day head start. Whilst no longer athletic, he was an industrious sort of man, and could easily have been on a boat to the continent by that evening. If he didn’t want to be found, he wouldn’t be. Lady Collidon, an odd expression caught somewhere between concern and elation upon her face, told Mary she was free to go about her day, and thanked her for the effort.

Lucy immediately scuttled after Mary, whispering outlandish theories as to the reasons behind Lord Collidon’s disappearance. She wasn’t the only one interested. Mary briefly became the toast of the household, everyone wanted to talk to her about what she had discovered. They were rather disappointed to find that she had merely discovered an absence — the inventions of her discovery of the old man’s body or a poorly concealed treasure chest were petulantly abandoned —  but they made the best of it. The stories shifted over the next few weeks, as the drawing in of the winter time gave the household ample gossiping time.

At first, the old man had run away to Australia to be with his long lost love, callously spurning poor Lady Collidon, but it was considered unrealistic that anyone would put up with him for long. Then, the story shifted to him being a notorious gambler (how he was notorious without any of them knowing about it priorly was left unexplained) who had escaped town to avoid angry debt collectors with pitchforks and the like. This too was dismissed; for all his many, many faults, the old man was meticulous, and was not prone to flights of fancy or fortune. At last, he was ascribed the simplest, most accurate answer any of them could give: he was gone, and that was that.

In the absence of a riotous story, Mary’s fame waned — not that she minded, she was shy by nature — as the household turned instead in favour of rejoicing. He had been a horrible, cruel man, and his absence was considered an early Christmas treat. No one was ever particularly concerned with where he had gone, apart from the sheer scandal of it. Especially since it seemed that he wasn’t coming back. There was no inquest, no inquiry, no one cared. He was just gone. Out of sight, and out of mind almost as quickly. His name stopped being mentioned, too — whilst the gossip of his disappearance remained for a little time, he was almost exclusively referred to with the informal ‘Old Man’, a last act of defiance against a cruel master who would not be missed. The whole household, indeed the house itself, breathed a sigh of relief every time his name went unmentioned. He slipped into obscurity with frightening speed.

Lady Collidon, too, it must be said, flourished without his presence. The gardens were opened to the public, parties and dances were held, and the accounts, though always above the line of loss, now grew exponentially under her careful quill. She remembered every single one of the servants’ names, and was schooling herself into memorising their birthdays. The manor came alive with her in charge of it. She was a better man of the house, quote unquote, than the old man had ever been. Even the butler, who had never been prevailed upon to praise any employer of his, was once heard to call her — with some pain to his pride as a curmudgeon, it seemed — satisfactory.

And the old man still wasn’t there.

The only person happier with the new arrangement was Mary. Suddenly, there was no one jealously guarding the library’s door, yelling at her about dangerously fragile bindings and flammable paper. Provided she was clever about it, she could get a quarter, sometimes even half an hour alone in that wondrous room. The first time she managed it she was paralysed by the decision of which book to read first for the entire period, instead simply running her fingers reverently along the most appealing spines. They were thick, and the leather seemed to be as new, even on the older books. It sprung out so much that the books almost blended together, into one cohesive unit. The absence that had plagued her first exploration disappeared like a bad dream, replaced by a much nicer one; a dream of reading and words. By the time the solstice rolled around, she had gotten it down pat — she would spend her mornings, in the brief span of time between lighting the house’s hearths and washing the floors, curled up in the furthest armchair from the door, giving her time to pretend she was working on the very rare occasion when someone else entered the library.

And she read. Quickly, voraciously. The pages, even back then yellow with age, felt as soft as velvet against her hand, and the ink, brown and peeling and often badly scrawled, nevertheless seemed to her a better comfort than any friend she had ever had, not that she truly had any. Lucy tried, sometimes, but she didn’t understand. No one did. Especially not since Mary’s parents … it was easier to read, than to think about it.

She read. She read, and read, and read. Princesse de Clèves, Robinson Crusoe, Richardson’s Pamela, the world dissolved into a shifting blur of ink that gave way to blue seas and golden sands, green forests and misty cityscapes, themselves blurring as she delved deeper and deeper into Shakespeare, Dekker, Jonson, Webster—

She blinked. It was Christmas Eve. How long had it been Christmas Eve? She had lost track of time completely, not just in hours, but in days. It almost hurt to, but she made herself put down the book, and looked out of the window. Crisp, white snow covered the manor’s grounds. None fell from the sky at the present, but the air was tinged with a mistiness that implied snowfall, all blurry at the edges.

The old man must be cold out there, she thought.

Now, that was odd, she thought again — or rather, a different part of Mary’s mind thought in answer to the first thought. Why think of him now? None of us have thought of him in weeks.

Isn’t that odd, though? She tapped the window with her fingernails, still shut tight. He disappeared. That’s worth more than gossip, that’s worth inquests. Investigations. If not by the household, by the local magistrate. He might not have been well liked, but he was undeniably a big part of their lives. Mary, in particular, had often been at odds with him, given she chiefly looked after the fireplaces, and he chiefly concerned himself with very delicate papers. She had even been the one to find him, or rather not find him. She should be more concerned, surely? Spending so much time in the last place a man was seen alive. Not that he could be dead, surely not. He was just gone. She shouldn’t worry.

And yet…

Why? Why was such a horrid man so easily forgotten? Why had he disappeared into the night? Why did his name, his proper name, flit from her thoughts?

Why, when she tried to call an image of his face to the forefront of her mind, was it so awfully smudged…

There was a noise behind her, and the thoughts escaped her. Mary dove for her polishing rag and tried to look busy as Lady Collidon entered the room. Two gentlemen, aged and important-looking, followed in her wake. Mary curtsied, and was pleased when Lady Collidon remembered her name unprompted; she wasn’t sure she was important enough to warrant that new distinction of the lady’s. She told Mary that the gentlemen were here to appraise the book collection. She didn’t use the word sold, or taken away, but Mary had heard them all the same.

Mary polished the edge of the fireplace with a snail’s pace, in the hopes that she’d hear all that would be said. She heard enough.

…exquisite…

…private collections…

…put to auction…

Taken away.

Mary managed to avoid crying until she had left the room, but it was a close run thing, especially with the single, sympathetic look Lady Collidon briefly fixed her with. Apparently she hadn’t been nearly as subtle as she’d hoped. Lucy later told her, without meeting her eyes, that the household had collectively agreed that she could’ve done with some cheering up.

Especially after what happened to your parents, Lucy didn’t say, but it was written in the way she held herself. And Mary had always been a good reader. Everyone had liked the Wellings, so they’d turned a blind eye. But enough time had passed, it seemed. Sympathy would not prevent her books from being taken away from her.

The auction was set for a week from that day. She used the period of grace to its fullest extent. She seemed to do more reading than sleeping, eating, anything. No one came to check on her. No one came into the room at all. Perhaps they considered these last few days her Christmas present. Perhaps they thought she needed time to say goodbye. Regardless, Mary was grateful. The grass is always greener on the other side, but the same is true of things that are about to leave; meals are always at their most delicious just before the plate is taken to the sink, and books are more beautifully written, more wonderfully relatable, more everything before they have to be taken away.

Six days passed in a blur of brown ink and thick leather. Sometimes she forewent reading and just wandered, letting her fingertips trail along ancient spines with singular spidery-silver names. The library itself embraced her in return. When she did read, she did so more deeply than before, pouring more of herself into every line she read, and getting back far more than she had sewn in return.

It was the night before the auction, in that deep darkness that holds all the winter nights unhappily saddled with the days between Christmas and New Year’s Eve. Mary couldn’t sleep. Of course she couldn’t. Her eyes were wide open, and she could see lines of writing on yellowing pages swarming in front of her, like a temptation, like a taunt. Nothing she could think of, not the household’s sympathy, not the disappearance of the old man , could make it disappear. It was well past midnight by the time she admitted to herself that it wasn’t going anywhere, and she slipped out of bed. She was careful not to wake Lucy as she lit a candle and stole out of the room, tiptoeing through the house. Every movement she made seemed to create a cacophony of noise, and the floor was as cold as ice against her bare feet — and yet, she reached the library without further incident, and the trip seemed to her to take only a moment.

As before, Mary was almost tempted to knock before opening the door, like when she had been sent to retrieve the absent old man. She stifled a laugh at herself as she entered. The candle, flickering slightly in the cold air of a new room, did not illuminate as much darkness as she had hoped. She wondered if the old man had had the same problem, as he flipped through his ancient history tomes in the dead of night.

And there it is again, thought that isolated section of Mary’s mind that seemed to be making a lot of fuss recently. Why can’t I remember his name? Should be easy enough, it was only a month or so ago that he … ran away? Disappeared? See, she couldn’t remember that either! Something was off. Like snow falling upwards in the distance. His name — the house still bore it, his wife sleeping upstairs still bore it, and yet Mary could not place it now that it applied to him. The connection was cut. What was his name? How could she possibly not remember his name—?!

Collidon.

Yes. That was his name. Lord Fitzwilliam Collidon. An old man with cruelty in him right down to the bone.

Only it hadn’t appeared in her head unprompted. It had appeared in front of her eyes. Silver weaving into dark leather, so dark and aged it was almost black. The spine of one of the books. It was so central on the shelf, and its bound colour almost emanated outwards, that Mary wasn’t sure how she had possibly missed it before. She was quite sure she had run her hands across that very copy. What else was she to do but to take it off the shelf?

Collidon was alone on the spine, but it wasn’t the only name on the cover. In neat order, in that same spidery silver weaving that reflected the candlelight so neatly, were a list of more names than should make a true title: The Lives of Legate Caesius Nasica, Uhtred of Swaffham, Edith Fairhead, Simon de Lesseps, Viscount Francis Lovell, Lady Henrietta Plantagenet, John Lavatch & Lord Fitzwilliam Collidon, Ad Finem. Mary sounded her lips around each one, but she wasn’t entirely sure that the whisper she heard had come from within her. It might’ve come from the other books.

Collidon’s name wasn’t younger than the others. It was as though the title had been written down all at once, despite the book’s clear age. Would his name be inside as well—

What the hell are you doing?! screamed Mary inside her own head, and the words burst through a dam somewhere inside her, letting a tidal wave of fears roar back into her mind. Where is the old m— Lord Collidon, why did he leave, what if he didn’t leave, what if he was taken, why can’t I remember, how long has It been stealing my thoughts? But the loudest thought, the most concurrent one, made itself known:

Don’t open the book! Leave now, this isn’t normal!

She shoved the book back onto the shelf without any care for its wellbeing, and turned to dart out of the door. But the door wasn’t there anymore. There were only more shelves, filled with more books, more of the same book, or rather all the books had always been all the same book, because despite their different sizes and ages and prints and bindings, every single book in the whole library now printed Collidon, Collidon, Collidon along their spines. It’s all of them, she thought. It’s any of the books, and therefore it’s all of the books. No more Marlowe or Dekker or Webster. Just Collidon, always and forever. The silver reflection from all directions would’ve been blinding if it had not, somehow, impossibly, still been pitch black at the exact same time.

Mary screamed. The books swallowed the sound of anguish as easily as they always had. The cushion that comforts also suffocates.

She whirled around, hot wax splashing painfully against her fingertips, as her eyes searched for the window, the window that Lord Collidon had not even managed to open when whatever happened had happened to him. And the window was there. It existed, in a way that the door hadn’t. She could see it.

But it blinked out of existence before she could take a single step towards it. The shelves seemed to be getting closer. An hour ago, this many books would’ve been heaven to Mary. She knew better now.

Water, water, everywhere, and you’re about to drown, she thought. Maybe she could escape through the fireplace? Climb up the chimney? She dove for the space where she knew it ought to be without looking first, in case that was what had done away with the door and the window; the act of acknowledgement. It wasn’t. She hit her head quite painfully on a newly existent copy of The Lives of Collidon et al, Ad Finem, and sprawled backwards onto the icy floor. At least the wooden boards weren’t shelves yet. That was grounding. She dug her nails into them, hoping for a splinter to keep her sharp.

She glared at the books. They glared back at her. There was a moment where they seemed to be at an impasse. But her candle was waning. Whatever was coming, it was better to face it still with light. She was reasonably certain that the thought was her own. What would a library’s thoughts sound like, anyway?

She steeled her courage, and took a copy off of the shelf nearest to her. The library wanted her to read? Fine. She’d read. She’d always liked reading, under any circumstance. Under a tree by sunlight, by moonlight, by candlelight if need be.

Collidon’s name sparkled tauntingly at her from the bottom of the elongated title. He’d always been a nasty man. He’d said something she should remember, though. Actually, he’d yelled it. What had it been?

Mary flipped open the cover, and put the candle on the floor next to the book to see better by. The copy sat flat against the floor, as though it had been opened a hundred times; she pressed it down with the tips of her fingers so that the pages themselves didn’t runkle up with the sheer number of them. The ink was a deep red, but seemed to be the same print as all the brown-inked books had been. She tried, briefly, to read the words, but the opening pages were in Latin — she turned tens of wafer-thin pages at a time — then Old English, then Middle English, and finally into something she recognised. It was talking about some man, some John Lavatch, wasting away in an empty, windtorn shack.

It was nice to be reading again, she thought. It was probably her thought. It sounded like something she’d think. And it was always nice to be reading.

John Lavatch was taking care of a book he owned. A prized possession.

Mary could understand that. Books were her favourite too.

John Lavatch’s book was a delicate thing, written on thin pages and fragile as anything. He kept well away from naked flames…

Oh, flammable, that was the word Lord Collidon had kept on yelling at her when she’d tried to sneak in here. Such an interesting word. Such a silly thing to think.

And here she was, reading by candlelight.

Without thinking about it, or rather without giving The Lives of Collidon et al, Ad Finem the chance to steal the thought away from her before she could think it, Mary grabbed the candle up in one hand and shoved it flame first into the pages. She let out a single barking laugh of relief, of victory, of a trick-well-pulled—

The candle sank into the book like it was sinking into a pudding, until it was completely covered, and then the pages pulled shut behind it. There was no smell of burning. The flames didn’t take hold. All that happened was the book began to glow orange from within. All the books did; a flickering, horridly contrasting shine that threw as many shadows as lights across the room, that spread amongst the whole library. Her eyes gleamed in orange reflection. To an outside observer, it would’ve looked like she was being burned instead.

Mary swore.

And her other hand hadn’t moved. The one that had still been pressing the pages down. She looked down at it, and wished that she hadn’t.

Her hand was slowly being swallowed by the book as well.

She screamed, and screamed, and tried to pull it off of her, but it was welded to her flesh, possibly to her bones by now. Unlike the candle, her hand wasn’t merely being consumed by the pages, but being made to be part of them. She could see a red tint being drawn from where her palm had the most contact, seeping towards the letters of John Lavatch — oh, thought something in her, dry blood turns brown after a while — and it hurt, yes, it hurt, it hurt to have her flesh squished paper-thin and to have her bones slowly and spontaneously turn to mulch, but that physical feeling could not possibly compare with what it was doing to her mind. Because she was wise to it now. She could feel it seeping her thoughts away, taking in everything that made Mary Wellings Mary Wellings, just like it had done to Lord Collidon, just like it had done to every sorry sod before the two of them. The old man had been eaten out of the fabric of existence. If a person is just a collection of thoughts maintained, then a library is a collection of thoughts stored, and the larger mass would draw the other one in, as inevitable as gravity. She was being gutted out from within and stored, and in time, it would do that to all of her, not just her body and mind but to her memory; the memory the world had of her. She was being leeched from existence, all at once, mind, body, soul. It hurt, and she screamed.

And she fought. She tried to tear the book to pieces, she tried to tear her own arm off, she tried to keep concentration and grounding with more and more splinters, and she tried to remember herself, surrounding her self with memory after memory, the good, the bad, the terrible. She fought, and fought, and fought.

She succeeded only in prolonging her pain. Mary was strong, in her heart and soul, but it was too late; she had spent the better part of a month bearing that heart and that soul to the books, to the act of reading, and the library had taken them gladly. It would not give them back now. It was hungry, if such an inexplicable thing could ever be motivated by something so human. She kept fighting anyway, and it took The Lives of Collidon et al, Ad Finem thirty-four agonising minutes to consume her — considerably longer than John Lavatch. Eight times as long as Lord Collidon. She was already lost. She was lost before she even set foot in that library. Because she was a reader.

And no one was coming to save her.

Twelve hours later, in the cold light of day, Lady Collidon sold what was now legally (in absentia) her book collection at auction. Most of the books went to one single household, being kept as one cohesive group. A gift, apparently, from a loving grandfather with money to burn, to a beloved grandson who was a known reader. The collection included an absurdly long-titled book, a miscellaneous history the auctioneer abbreviated to The Lives of Wellings et al, Ad Finem. Wellings was assumed to also be the author, since her name was on the spine. Collidon Manor ticked on, not noticing the bleeding absence in the slightest.

Three days after that, Lucy asked whether Mary had been let go, since she was quite worried about her. Lady Collidon did not look up from her breakfast as she answered:

‘Who’s Mary?’

Finem.

Buddy Ray Deering is a Writer, Actor, Director and General Nuisance from London. Aside from Scribbled, they have had works published in anthologies by Wingless Dreamer Publishers, the literary magazine A Curious Moon, and have written and directed an original play for the Rostra Theatre Society. In their free time, they enjoy watching pretentious old films.